Endgame

Kurtag’s Endgame at the Proms.

There was a narrative, there was a shape.

I wasn’t sure how it would work.

Would Beckett’s words need musical amplification?

Answer is in the musical analogy. Repetition. Cyclicity. The music conducted its own abstract patterns and repetitions in parallel with the drama and the text.

Tragic dimension of being unable to leave or progress, intensified by the agonised cries – Hamm for his father at the end, and Nagg’s cry for Nell following her death half-way through. These were moments of searing dramatic power.

The music was always poised. Moments of lush harmony – fleeting moments of radiance. Otherwise colours in suspension and rotation. Harp, cimbalon, piano, celeste, timpani, in soft beaty contrasts with string harmonics and muted string chords.

This use of colour, of immediacy and directness, of motivic rendering of sound, is really impressive. Not least because the tension, a kind of liquid suspension, did not flag during the two hour concert ritual.

Hamm - Frode Olsen bass

Clov - Morgan Moody bass-baritone

Nell - Hilary Summers contralto

Nagg Leonardo Cortellazzi tenor

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth

Victoria Newlyn stage director